Spoiler alert --here are the six myths:
1. Millionaires Are Smarter
2. Millionaires Are Just Luckier
3. Millionaires Live Lavishly
4. Most Millionaires Were Born Into Money
5. Millionaires Have to Be Fearless
6. They Earn Million-Dollar Paychecks
This is actually great news because it means that all of us not-so-smart bum-luck cowardly low-born cheapskates in crummy jobs really have a chance after all!
/johnny
In my early 20’s I had a negative net worth, had no assets except a car I owed more on than it was worth, I had multiple warrants out for my arrest for failure to pay speeding and no insurance tickets, dabbled with illegal drugs, and had dropped out of jr college with no degree and was a waiter at a Mexican restraint chain barely able to pay my rent.
20 years later I am a multi-millionaire with a masters degree who owns his own business.
I just woke up one day and said.... ENOUGH! I am going to fix my life and set out the next day to do so.
It was actually quite easy. I KNEW everything I was doing wrong, I had just chosen to do the wrong things. I guess in that regard I may have had an edge over those who may have never been thought right from wrong. But besides that, I was given nothing. I am 100% self made.
Jealousy causes more widespread misery than anything else.
An old Russian joke tells about a poor peasant whose better-off neighbor has just gotten a cow. In his anguish, the peasant cries out to God for relief from his distress. When God replies and asks him what he wants him to do, the peasant replies, “Kill the cow.”
One of the most consistent findings of behavioral economics is that we gauge our own economic well-being by comparing ourselves with our neighbors. Studies have found that, given a choice between making 25 percent more than their neighbors or making 25 percent less, people will choose the former even when the latter amount is more money.
Not only is envy irrational, it’s socially and personally corrosive. In his wonderful book, The Seven Deadly Sins, the late Henry Fairlie called envy the “nastiest, the most grim, the meanest” of the seven deadly sins. Sneering, sly, vicious. According to Fairlie, “the face of envy is never lovely. It is never even faintly pleasant.”
It could hardly be otherwise. Loving your neighbor, or even working alongside him, is next to impossible when you regard his gains as a personal loss.
The problem is this -— We have actually ELECTED many ENVIOUS people into office who actually REFLECT our own character.